Tag: future

I am having breakdown after breakdown with these graduate school essays. Is it that I really just don’t want to apply? I think not. Is it that I am scared of applying? Likely.

I am scared for various reasons.

I do not want to be rejected. I am good enough for this program. But I might not be a good match for it. So, if the school decides that I am not a good match, and rejects my application, what then? If the school accepts me, and I later find out that I am not a good match, and I end up hating the program, what then? What if I am a good match for the program/school, but I end up just not liking the studies? And am I applying because it just feels like something safe to pursue? So many of my co-agers seem to have resorted to graduate school whenever something else for work has not panned out as hoped. Do I resist applying, because I am worried that it will look like a sort of ‘I messed up and had no back-up plan, so I have to go to graduate school,’ kind of thing?

I like being prestigious. I enjoy being snobby. (Not like crazy, but to a certain degree, I mean.) I love the schools I have already attended, and I love being able to tell people that I attended them. They are special, well-known, highly acclaimed, and amazing quality schools. I feel like this one is nowhere near the same caliber, and holds very little respect in its name. The only way I would be comfortable attending it, would be if I had something amazing afterward, be it a spectacular PhD program or seemingly unreal work success. It is the kind of place where I would want to work, not attend school. Just like my teaching last semester, I want to be able to share about the school as someone who supports it as an outsider. Attending the school would feel in adequate for my own abilities, skills, and knowledge. I want a graduate degree, but I think I don’t want it from here.

However, is this fear coming forth, creating excuses for me? I suppose the best plan of action would be to apply to the program, and then see what happens. If they accept me, great. Now I get to choose to attend or not. If they reject me, great. Now I get to choose what else to do with my talents and my time. (I think I want to do the latter already.)

Okay. So, let’s finish this application, and let’s rock it!

P.S. And I know that I want the degree so that I can further my career in teaching, expanding it to English, as well as creating the possibility of teaching at the college level. However, I think that is precisely what has been holding gem back from seeing what is really there for me. That just makes so much sense. It is difficult to set aside things that make beautiful sense. If I take the step of this graduate program now, then I can begin teaching English quite soon. However, I love teaching high school. And I love doing other things, too. I am substitute teaching today. I love subbing regularly in a school, where I get to know the students just enough, but am not stuck to one subject area alone. Long-term subbing is kind of the best. Yes, it pays way less than regular teaching. But I love it. I want to teach part-time. Period. Even when I consider my life post-Master-degree, I still see myself teaching only part-time. I think what I fear the most is what I will do in order to sustain a part-time teaching lifestyle financially. Or, rather, how to figure out what to do. If I don’t manage that now, I will spend the next two and a half years freaking out about just that – if only in the background of my mind. I think I want to figure that out now. Now. 🙂

Ever feel like you’re secretly an amazing artist, and you just have to set up your life so that you start creating the art, and the world will follow suit by tossing gobs of money your way to encourage more art to be shared with the world? I totally do. And I felt a lot of the pull today towards doing that with my life. It has been a spectacular end of and beginning of these two different years of my life today. My brain is sleepy from so much back-and-forth thought patterns and emotions, but thrilled at prospects that feel ever nearer. 🙂 I have happy hopes and intentions for this year.

Sometimes, it feels like life is on the brink of either incredible breakthrough or tremendous breakdown… as though I’m balancing on a fence, walking along the upper slate of wood, like I did all the time as a kid. I know it isn’t very safe, and so I am careful, but I do it, nonetheless. I know it could end in near-tragedy. But I know, too, that it could end in complete success. That’s how my life feels right now. Though my balance seems to be deteriorating as of late, it still feels like I am just one little step away from something huge.

Do I even really care what that is? I think not. I just want to know that there is actually something there.

I know fully that I could drop all of this and move elsewhere, find great work, and move forward happily in life. But something has me here right now, and makes going elsewhere feel like running away. I just can’t see what it is that I keep wanting to escape every time my balance gets wobbly. I can’t see the hand that is gripping me from behind, pinning me here either. I guess I’m walking the fence with blinders on… makes me feel even worse for horses, because this kind of really sucks.

Whatever… I’ll keep thinking on it all. I know everything will be great eventually for me. I’m clear on that. I just hope that I don’t end up running away from something, leaving myself incomplete… perhaps that is the key to everything moving forward. Well, of course it is. Duh. Hmm…

Sometimes I wonder if it wouldn’t just be better to get a high-paying job in an office, and start saving up. Then, after a couple or few years, start the process for adoption. The only work so far that I have loved doing, without almost any question ever, is doing things with other people’s kids (nannying). Maybe having a somewhat terrible corporate job in suits is worth it for having a kid…

I just don’t see myself happy each morning and each bedtime in a job like that, and that means bad sleep each night and a tough start to the day each morning.

I don’t know… sometimes I get depressive, and then desperate, and start calculating what ‘makes sense’ for life, as opposed to ‘listening to my heart’. Come to think of it, I’m not sure I’ve even asked my heart what I/it want/wants to do with my life and time…

Now is as good a time as ever, I suppose. 🙂

P.S. I’ve noticed that, whenever I get upset in the depressed, my life is going nowhere experience, I have an almost panicked desire to move to Europe, and it is most often France. It’s not like I have any idea whatsoever what I would do there, or how that would solve any of my current issues. Plus, it would create the issue of being away from almost everyone I know and love and who loves me, since most of them are in the US. However, there’s just this feeling that arises that living in Europe somehow would just make everything okay, and in a good way (not just tolerable okay, but good okay). Anyway, just something I noticed tonight.

I realized today that right now is the perfect time for one of those necessary unpaid internships designed to get into a field of work. I have a place to live, and am mostly provided food and water, and all without immediate cost to me. And I have support from family to pursue what I feel is best. I just need to keep up my end of the semi-agreement for the next toward a half (-ish) months, and I expect that the food and shelter will remain available to me at the same cost for quite some time… giving me the perfect opportunity to test out those jobs that have intrigued me, but would not offer money for the first little while of working in them.

I don’t remember where I heard it recently, but I heard the phrase that was something to the effect of, “How can you expect to move to the next chapter of your life, when you keep re-reading this chapter?”

I really loved and love the wording of this, though the idea is not new to me. However, the new wording allowed me to look at it a bit differently. I notice now that I am actually working on just this, proactively so since I heard the quote/phrase. I have been looking specifically at areas where I am at unease in my current life chapter, and seeing what has me be at unease in them. Finding those is the first step in moving past them – as soon as I see them, I can do something with them. So long as they evade me, I am left with only the result of their existence, and cannot seem to do anything differently in those circumstances. I want to move on to the next chapter of my life, and I see that these are all things I need to handle for myself, so that I don’t have to continue going back and revisiting, re-reading, them over and over again.

A large point on this has been the idea of how certain people (in a particular area of my life especially) perceive me, contrasted with how I have wanted them to see me in the past, and then tumbled together with the questions of Why did I want to be perceived that way? and Do I even want to be perceived that way anymore? It has been unique, to be sure. And I am liking the forward movement of it all.

A quick bit on it all: Other people’s opinions of me is none of my business, as I well know, and I have been reminded of that. Taking that into account, I have been examining why I ever really cared, and found that I wanted them to see me as I found an acceptable appearance… though that was not necessarily exactly how I was. And so, I am dealing with releasing any wish to be seen as something inconsistent with who I really am and who I really want to be. I have done stupid things, things I utterly dislike. I have done wonderful things, things I love. And I have done stupid things that I love, as well as wonderful things that I don’t much like. So, what? Those are things I have done. They are not I. They merely contribute to the formation of who I currently am, always helping me to be better than I was in my previous breath. I have loads of specifics on all of this, but I don’t really want to share them… not yet, anyway.

I miss my bed in Japan. My bedroom, especially, is one thing I miss most these days. It was a haven for me. No matter what kind of chaos or boredom lurked in my life, every night, my bedroom awaited me in calm, open, and empty space… in beauty. I shut my doors, and was safe in my retreat from everything else. Only love and blessings were ever allowed into my bedroom. I wasn’t even allowed to walk in it if I hadn’t recently showered. Clean clothes, my ukulele and ukulele music, my nighttime books, and water and tissues were just about all that ever went in there, aside from a clean me and my bed.

My bedroom now is slightly larger, but filled with boxes and stuff… a sentimentality to which I am not so sure I still want to cling. I think I am afraid that I will forget the memories, if I get rid of the objects. I do not, for the most part, want the objects, but the memories and the ways I felt. Without the objects, what will remind me?